Fellow blogger supposedgenius162 of Thought Orchard tagged me in a book post about specific genres, and of course I couldn’t resist joining in the fun! I tried at first to limit myself to one recommendation per genre, but I soon realized that simply wasn’t possible. I am an English teacher, after all. Books are my “thing”. I’m mostly drawn to the classics, but I did try to sift in some more current recommendations into the mix, too. Enjoy!

1. DYSTOPIAN
I have an odd fascination with this genre. I thoroughly enjoyed teaching both The Giver by Lois Lowry (to middle school grades) and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (to high school classes). Bradbury in particular gives me the chills with both his ideas and his prose. Both books generated some awesome class discussions among my students, too. They were drawing parallels to The Hunger Games, while in my mind I was drawing parallels to Brave New World.

Today I’m filling the oh-so-exciting role of “Study Hall Monitor”. Actually, that’s going to be my job for the next week – watching kids do homework. Awesome. (Read that with a note sarcasm, please.) Mind you, I’m not complaining about a week’s worth of sub work lined up. That part is awesome. I just have to come up with ways to entertain myself while I’m at it. I have my laptop, but I’m still waiting for the paperwork that will let me connect to the internet to finish being processed. I’m typing this post in a Word document which I’ll copy to WordPress later.

Fortunately, I’m a natural people-watcher, so that provides its own entertainment for today. The students in this school district are a good demographic – a nice, solid middle-class mix of generally behaved kids. Most of them sit quietly in their assigned seats without being reminded not to talk. They aren’t all working, but at least they’re quiet. One young man in the corner has his head down, catching a few more minutes of sleep before his next class. Others are drawn into the world of their personal devices. Yes, the smart phones, iPads, and iPods are allowed in study hall, just so long as they don’t disrupt the people around them. Earbud headphones cross all the cultural and social boundaries, the only common accessory among a sea of fashionistas, athletes, academics, and artsy types.